Archive

As regular readers know, I use a Mac. But the lack of a midrange model really has me fuming and I need a machine that does the job, at a price that doesn’t kick the buyer in the face.

I received a brochure for Dell the other day which showed off a nice little quad-core machine for pittance compared to a quad core Mac Pro. I could upgrade the dual internal drives to 1 TB drives, drop in a Blu-ray burner and, with Adobe CS4, I could be editing and burning HD video with aplomb, compared to standing around with my thumb up my Mac ass waiting for Steve Jobs to get past his “bag of hurt” feelings and make Blu-ray authoring on the Mac a reality.

It’s a strange thread… Tuan Nguyen of Tom’s Hardware wrote a extensive and detailed price comparison of Macs versus comparably equipped PC’s and the results were as expected- there really is no price difference for the core hardware- and- if you like Apple’s tight integration and free media Apps, the Mac easily wins.

But one paragraph in his article really hit home because it echoes what I and many others have been saying for years: Apple needs an affordable, mid-sized Pro machine. Read more…

As much as I lament the demise of Macworld Expo East in NYC (Boston was just too far for people from the NYC, Phila, DC, Baltimore hub to easily travel to, compared to NYC) the annual January Expo remains and has actually become stronger in recent years with Apple’s expansion into new electronic markets, and growing strength as a computer company (even though they dropped “Computer” from their name.)

Once the holidays pass, the next event geeks like us focus on (aside from CES) is the Macworld Expo. The rumor mills are already abuzz with ultralight laptop, movie rentals, 3g iPhone, and a whole lot more…

Next Level Hardware.com has a report on their Battleship Mtron. This is a test of solid state disks (SSD) and how they can take your computing system to the next level. In reality, they take a computing system to the next order of magnitude. Previous tests have taken the Mac Pro to 284 MBps with four internal hard drives striped n a RAID-0.

I am an event videographer who has long used DV and silently given thanks many times to those engineers who replaced 12+ cables between my Betacam deck and my capture system (Y in, Y out, R-Y in, R-Y out, B-Y in, B-Y out, Aud-L in, Aud-L out, Aud-R in, Aud-R out, Genlock, RS-422) with one, small wire. FireWire (as apple calls it) and iLink (as Sony calls it) are the IEEE-1394 specification. (Bonus points for the first person who can identify the black AV IO box pictured here in the comments)

First it was FW400 (400 Mbps) and then FW800. But many years have passed since FW800 shipped and the normal rate of development that had us expecting FW1600, etc, left us grossly disappointed for years.

Well, now the 1394 Trade Association has ratified a FW3200 speed.
But will anyone care? …

I’ve blustered on and on about how Apple doesn’t offer anything like a Shuttle PC for Pro Mac users who need something smaller- or something that is rack mountable, to easily integrate, remain connected to, and travel with all the other video gear.

Pictured here is Shuttle’s Quad-Core Xeon Processor. I pitted the Shuttle against the Mac Pro, similarly configured, and guess which costs more?Moreover, there’s an article on LifeHacker which can make the Shuttle (or any similar build your own) system the cheapest Mac Pro anywhere…

I’ve blustered on and on about how Apple doesn’t offer anything like a Shuttle PC for Pro Mac users who need something smaller- or something that is rack mountable, to easily integrate, remain connected to, and travel with all the other video gear.

Pictured here is Shuttle’s Quad-Core Xeon Processor. I pitted the Shuttle against the Mac Pro, similarly configured, and guess which costs more?Moreover, there’s an article on LifeHacker which can make the Shuttle (or any similar build your own) system the cheapest Mac Pro anywhere…